A Recurring Nightmare

Deja vu all over again. Every time that a new provocation threatens to deepen the violence between Israel and the Palestinians is yet another time of anguish and despair. Why is this conflict so intractable? The reasons are many and complex.
But nobody really wants to hear them, on either side. In the now hysterical echo chamber of social media, it boils down to one thing on both sides of the divide: propaganda.
I don't trust that most people, regardless of their stance on the matter, can tell the difference between information and propaganda. Propaganda is manipulative, easy to digest and aims to inflame passions. Information, on the contrary, is hard work. It relies on facts. It's supposed to be objective and most importantly, it makes you think, consider, weigh, make up your mind. It's too much work, so people go with propaganda.
Well, I'm sick of the propaganda on both sides. I'm sick of scrolling down to rivers of  hatred unleashed upon Israel, the likes of which other terrible crises, indeed even worse crises, never manage to provoke. I don't hear such passionate outrage about Assad's ongoing genocide of his own people, or about the depredations of ISIS in Iraq, about the horrifying perennial conflicts in Africa, about America's drone attacks, or even about the humanitarian crisis of undocumented immigrant children right on our border. Such outpourings of virulent outrage are reserved exclusively for Israel because Israel is perceived to be the sole bully, the oppressor, the eternal aggressor in this conflict. Also, in many cases, because it allows antisemitism to come safely out of the woodwork. And please don't tell me that I perceive antisemitism because as a Jew, I am too sensitive. Antisemitism is like porn: I know it when I see it.
Newsflash for both Jews and non-Jews alike: being critical of the policies of the State of Israel does not make you an antisemite. Many Israelis and Jews, myself included, disagree with the continued occupation and other right wing policies of the current Israeli government. We are appalled and concerned by them. That does not mean we do not support Israel. On the contrary, we are worried that they are detrimental to Israel's survival. We want a better way.
Hating Israel, on the other hand, claiming that you are an anti-zionist, questioning Israel's right to exist, and spewing vitriol against Jews, that is a different story.
I am equally sick of Israeli propaganda about thousands of Hamas missiles (not remotely hitting anything, yet) and how the kind Israeli army sends leaflets out to warn Palestinians, and how restrained it is. And what would you do if your neighborhood was showered with rockets every day? These spiffy memes neglect a fundamental issue: they neglect to consider the occupation. They neglect to consider that the Palestinians living under it in permanent humiliation and distress, have a right to fight it, just like Israel has a right to its self-defense.
No one looks at a map. Well, here's another map:

No one cares about the geopolitics, the demographics, and the frightening political complexities of the Middle East. People are busy posting pictures. Of fizzling flying missiles, to Israel's public relations misfortune, rarely landing on top of as yet unscathed civilians; on the other side, and far more damaging in every sense, of scores of Palestinian children killed and maimed by the Israelis. You tell me what provokes more outrage.
But much worse than the propaganda are most comments. Caught between two sides of a world citizenry that, with the advent of social media, has taken it upon itself to be the bearer of bad news, defender and apologist for one cause or the other, one is at the mercy of unrestrained lunacy, bordering on idiocy, on both sides.

Israel's occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is a rapidly spreading cancer that threatens its existence. It is morally untenable. It is fraying the fabric of civilization, let alone democracy, in Israel. In my view, it has become a grave strategic error. All it has unleashed is a threat to Israel's survival as a modern nation, from the oppression of the Palestinians to the unconscionable coddling of religious Jews in the expanding settlements. If Israel continues its path towards the extreme right, it may survive as an obscurantist theocracy, but that, my fellow Jews, should be cause for alarm and our most vocal opposition. Because if that happens, it will be the end of Israel. 
Having said this, many people see this conflict as Israel's sole responsibility. They choose to ignore the fact that the Palestinians are also oppressed by the vested, byzantine interests of the Arab world, to whom the Palestinians are a convenient tool for directing elsewhere the frustrations of their own oppressed citizens.
The only way out is to find the political will of all parties involved: of Israel, of the different Palestinian factions, of the neighboring Arab states and the rest of the Arab world, of Iran, of the US, the EU, Russia, China, etc, to sit down to serious negotiations and commit political will and economic resources to find a viable Palestinian state or some other option that ensures Israel's right to exist, preferably in peace.
Good luck with that.
Still, nobody, it seems to me, is thinking creatively. Part of my despair comes from realizing that Israel always falls right into Hamas's traps. I admire Israel's technological ingenuity and its human capital, but it amazes me that it has been unable to come up with a surprising, out of the box strategy against its enemies that does not entail a massive show of force, making Israel look like the worst villain the world has ever known. Think of something that will find its enemies off-guard. It can't be easy, but the predictability of the reaction is getting to be very depressing.
I have no solutions, but, perhaps unlike most people screaming like banshees about the conflict, I think about them. What's more, I've seen a map, and I have lived in Israel. I am not a Pollyanna (see maps). I am well aware of how a hostile Arab world in turmoil must look like from Israel's vantage point (hint: not good). But at this point, there has to be a more intelligent way to protect and defend Israel.
In the meantime, this is it. I will refrain from posting or commenting, defending or attacking, arguing and wasting my breath. If you bother with a screed for or against, don't expect an answer. I'm tuning out of this nightmare. Wake me when it's over.

Now Showing At A Theater Near You

Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator and Todd Solondz's Dark Horse.

Now Showing At A Theater Near You

Agnieszka Holland's Oscar nominated In Darkness.

Plus why the Oscars suck and why they are essential to world peace.

The Aftermath of Disaster

This was published in Spanish by Reforma exactly one year after the attacks.

After the initial shock, apparently I went back to my normal, ornery self:

Tuesday, September 11. Night.

South of 14^th Street, the island is cordoned off. Nobody can go below 14^th Street unless they show proof of residence in the area or are joining the rescue mission. Phones don’t work very well. I have less trouble calling my family in Mexico than making a local call. I feel relatively quiet, but I know my emotional distance comes from some automatic defense mechanism and not from my own volition.

The silence on the street is total, except for the sound of police sirens, helicopters and fire trucks, which is rather sparse given the magnitude of the disaster. I get international calls from some concerned friends. They know I live nearby. I watch TV and have internet on at the same time. On TV they regurgitate the horrible images of the explosions and collapses over and over, ad nauseam.

I have never heard such silence in my block, a spot full of usually crowded bars. A city in which people go out to eat, to drink, to dance seven days a week, has been completely silenced. A permanent hum scares sleep away. I don’t understand where it comes from. I open the windows to better listen to it. The smell of burnt rubber invades my apartment. I realize that what I’m hearing is the labored breathing of the buildings. 

Wednesday, September 12.

Today it smells worse. Giuliani has said that we should stay at home and we obey him. Giuliani, resented by many in this liberal city because of his abrasive personality and his puritanical and paternalist tendencies, behaves compassionately, intelligently and prudently, and he inspires trust. I have been cooped up at home all day. The phone rings every 15 minutes. Friends from all over the world call to comfort themselves that we are fine. Their calls make more bearable the loneliness and terror that have settled in the pit of my stomach. My intuition is that they are just as scared of the new world disorder that threatens to engulf us all. The calls are of mutual support. My friend Delia writes that her young daughter dreams at night of people jumping out of windows.

Between the acrid ashes and the media coverage, I’m disgusted. I decide to go outside and sniff around. Kids play under the cloud of dust and ash, followed closely by their parents. Some bars, restaurants and cafes are open. I see clusters of people standing on the corners that look south. I don’t understand what they are looking at. People wander around aimlessly from one corner to the next, shooting pictures and videos.

In this town of screamers, few people talk. At the corner of Houston and Sixth Ave, next to the fire station, a crowd gathers. People cheer every time rescuers or ash-covered firefighters go by. A young woman scrutinizes a lamppost and I decide she is crazy until I focus my eyes on the post and see the flyers with the pictures and names of the missing and the desperate messages imploring for news of their whereabouts.

I cry because these bastards have paralyzed my unstoppable city. But not completely. On the opposite corner, two Italian restaurants have opened their doors and the beautiful people eat pasta and drink wine au plein air, air rife with traces of asbestos, pulverized concrete and what in my view have got to be the human ashes of at least five thousand souls. However, I’m not surprised. I always knew that New Yorkers would never relinquish their inalienable right to go out for dinner, regardless of whatever catastrophe the future may bring. With this logic, I tell my husband, who is safe and sound in Panama, that this is the best week to make reservations at the hottest New York restaurants. But who has the appetite?
Since there is no traffic south of 14^thSt., some people make their dreams come true and glide through the empty streets on their rollerblades and bicycles.

Something never before seen: people look you in the eye as they pass you by. Men see me walking alone and look like they are ready to comfort me (and look like they are ready to be comforted back). The way things are, it seems that this week all the single girls may find a beau.

A guy gives me a small comic book. The doodles are very modern, but the content turns out to be an exhortation to return to the lap of our lord Jesus Christ, sponsored by one of those sects there’s no shortage of in this country, of loony evangelicals who are way too eager for the end of the world. Of course, they could not take long to materialize. How did they get to New York is beyond me, Greenwich Village even more so. Or were they already here?

At night there is thunder and lightning and military planes zoom by. I’m not scared. I have the air conditioner on to avoid hearing the silence. 

Thursday, September 13. 

North of 14^th Street, Manhattan seems perfectly normal, except taxis refrain from honking their insane horns. In the advertising agency I work at, I learn that one of our colleagues has lost his niece. My eyes tear up with indignation constantly.

Some of our clients have asked us to take a look at our commercials currently on air to make sure they don’t say things like “ A delicious explosion of flavor” or “A bomb of refreshment”. We make jokes in bad taste: “The Osama of sodas”, “A Jihad of nutrition for your family”.

Bush has declared that we all should go out at noon and pray at the worship place of our choice, which seems to me the stupidest idea that can occur to the president of a country in crisis, in a city which may still harbor extremists strapped with explosives. Besides, as an agnostic, I feel frankly discriminated against. In fact, I feel very alone in my distaste for these government-sponsored paroxisms of spirituality.

To judge from the tone that the media here have adopted, from now on we will be exposed to an indiscriminate barrage of sentimentalism and cheap patriotism. I have already started getting despicable chain letters with feelings of unity, prayer and revenge. The news are no longer news. They are lachrymose testimonies of the poor people who are desperately looking for their dead ones. I wonder what they are saying in the Middle East. What does Saddam think, for instance, what has Muammar declared, what’s the story in Kabul. If I watch the local news, I’m never going to find out. Here they are showing a paramedic that found a doll amid the rubble (there’s always one) and he intends to erect a monument with it if no one claims it.

The cloud of acrid dust has spread beyond 14^th street. I search for mouth masks at the drugstores. They are all out.

Bush, who since the incident, has the mien of a kid lost in the supermarket, uses an inflammatory and reductive rhetoric that seems taken straight out of a Hollywood action flick. We’re gonna smoke them, he says, Wanted, dead or alive. I haven’t the slightest doubt that this helps incite the incidents of harassment against members of the Arab-American community, and what is worse, against anybody who wears a beard and/or a turban. An idiot screams at the owner of a falafel joint nearby, “you make money here, but this is my country”, followed by a string of invective. Even though there are four Arabs and one aggressor, they remain silent. Standing half a block away, I can feel their fear. I don’t dare intervene.

Between testimonies, I read in the CNN news ticker the following item: an Islamic extremist in a German jail called the American authorities and warned them that there would be an attack on the WTC. Nobody talks about that. Nobody talks about the fact that Osama was trained by the CIA and that the Taliban is the result of American intervention in Afghan affairs. Nobody mentions these details, except some liberal friends that send me emails with such information. But, like Seamus Milne of The Guardian said, Americans react as if this instance of terror is a sheer impulse of evil that came out of nowhere, random and incomprehensible. They can't conceive that they may have done something to provoke it. They don’t know how much and why they are hated. It’s true. Information exists in this country and it is available to anybody, but few are interested. In general, the lack of American curiosity about the world is alarming.

 Union Square has become a spontaneous meeting ground to write thoughts, leave votive candles, hang pictures, play the congas. A group of young people sing and dance Give Peace A Chance, a song I’ve always found intolerably kitschy. A vigil has been organized at 7 pm. People are asked to light a candle in memory of the victims. A big crowd has gathered. A couple appears dressed as the Twin Towers. They are on stilts, dressed in black velvet leggings covered with shards of mirrors. They dance among the people, who are taking pictures. Why do these expressions of solidarity disgust me so much? Because they are vulgar, childish and innocent. Everything becomes a circus. I go to a movie and spend the entire screening thinking that an extremist is going to blow us all to pieces. 

Friday, September 14.

A regular day. North of 14th St. it looks like nothing ever happened. Taxis blare and create jams, people eat in restaurants.  New York, as usual.  

Saturday, September 15.

A friend who was upstate at the time of the catastrophe wants me to go with him to Canal St., which is now the border of the city. He wants to see something concrete. The only concrete thing to see are hordes of people with little American flags and tourists. People are snapping up postcards with pictures of the towers. The only concrete thing there is to see is a smoking crater at the end of the city’s canyons.

We have lunch at a restaurant where we are treated as if we had descended straight from heaven. Every two minutes they ask us if the food is to our liking. In fact, it is excellent. It is the first decent meal I’ve had since Tuesday. I feel it has been prepared with an intense desire to forget everything and come back to our banal normalcy. It tastes like glory.

A group of friends and I go to the movies. We need to get out of this funk. We pick Barbet Schroeder's Our Lady of The Assassins, based on the book by Fernando Vallejo. The film is in Spanish, which is delicious. And it turns out to have plenty of resonance. It’s about a different kind of terror (drug violence in Colombia), but it is hilarious, blasphemous, violent, and we enjoy it. A lot of its dark humor escapes the small audience. One of us says that when you live with the social injustice that causes this kind of savagery, you have a much more refined sense of irony. A phrase in the film is burnished in my mind. I paraphrase: 

“But child, don't you know that the difference between thought and action is civilization?"

My friends go home but I don't want to go to sleep. I go back to Union Square. The candles and the congas are still there. There’s a group of pale bearded guys and skeletal women with long skirts that sing songs only they know. Another sect. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of lit votive candles, bouquets of flowers, poems, exhortations for moderation, prudence and sanity. The catch phrase of the day is "An eye for an eye and we all go blind". People, respectful, are silent.

I find a Mexican flag. Someone has written on it 500 mexican ilegals (sic) unnamed. I find it an exaggerated number, but I don't doubt it. They are the kitchen helpers, the pizza delivery guys, the bathroom cleaners. I have not seen photocopies of their portraits, nor their names, or faces or teary relatives on TV. 

I can’t say I’m praying for them and their families, but my mind finally becomes silent.

I'm Tired of This Topic...

...but keep coming back to it, since there is nothing more stimulating to a blogger than ranting on deaf ears. Very interesting and important article by Roger Cohen on AIPAC vs. J Street:

The view that American Jews supportive of Israel but critical of its policies are not “real Jews” is, however, widespread. Israel-right-or-wrong continues to be the core approach of major U.S. Jewish organizations, from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.
To oppose the continued expansion of settlements in the West Bank (“Zionists are not settlers”), or question growing anti-Arab bigotry as personified by Israel’s rightist foreign minister and illustrated by the “loyalty oath” debate, or ask whether the “de-legitimization” of Israel might not have something to do with its own actions is to incur these organizations’ steady ire.
Debate remains stifled, despite Peter Beinart’s important piece this year in the New York Review of Books describing growing alienation among young American Jews asked to “check their liberalism at Zionism’s door.” Oh, sure, you can find all sorts of opinions about Israel all over the place; America remains an open society. But Aipac has systematically shunned a debate with J Street, the upstart Jewish organization that supports Israel, opposes the settlements and attempts to reclaim the progressive ideals of Zionism by saying that the systematic oppression of the Palestinians undermines Israel.
“These organizations’ view remains essentially that any time you engage in an activity critical of Israel you are trying to destroy the state of Israel,” Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of J Street, told me. “Here are all these Jewish kids being raised on great liberal values at Hebrew schools — walks for the homeless, Darfur, AIDS — but God forbid we talk about what’s happening in Israel! It’s a dynamic that cuts off discourse.” 

This doesn't happen only in the US. This happens in Jewish communities across the world. A Jew cannot utter one word criticizing Israel's policies without being suspected of self-hatred or antisemitism or both. I find this repulsive, offensive and untenable. And this is because (and it galls me to have to repeat it) I love and care for Israel very much and I want it to thrive in peace and stability with its neighbors and with the world. I want it not only to survive, which seems to be the basic goalpost of the "Israel Can Do No Wrong" camp, but to be the great nation it is meant to be: just, democratic, progressive, evolved, in keeping with the highest moral values of the Jewish people. Simple survival is not enough.
The monolithic, unquestioning, cossacks-are-setting-fire-to-the-shtetl approach of the major Jewish organizations is not helping Israel in the least. It leads to increasing international isolation, to Israel's worrisome radicalization and I am convinced that instead of helping assure Israel's continued and hopefully peaceful existence, it leads to more violence and more strife, both inside and outside of Israel's borders.
Israelis are perfectly capable of ruining their own lives, as they have been demonstrating in the recent past. It is their prerogative to democratically decide if they want to continue fighting with their neighbors and building more settlements, giving more and more power to intransigent and obscurantist religious forces, or if they are going to get tired of the endless aggravation and try to look for a solution that secures their borders while it allows for Palestinian life to evolve as well.
But I'll be damned if I am asked to withhold my critical faculties and my sense of values in order to help Israel no matter what. Israelis don't have this problem. They scream at each other with gusto from all sides of the political and ideological spectrum. So why can't Jews in the Diaspora do the the same?
I refuse to help Israel become a theocracy. I refuse to help Israel become a right wing state. I refuse to help Israelis self-destruct. And those of you Jews that think that you are doing great by Israel by doing that should open your eyes, and smell the coming devastation. You are helping to make things worse.
I think Jews of a similar persuasion to mine would do well to leave our nagging fears of betrayal behind (you know you have them), to stop thinking that somehow if we criticize or question, we are undermining, and help a more rational, more forward thinking point of view that supports Israel gain a stronger voice.

Department of Mindboggling Incompetence

My advice to Mr. Llamazares is, sue their culos for millions of dollars, as is the time-hallowed American custom.
My advice to the FBI is, why not just photoshop the actual guy, you idiots?
If Bin Laden has indeed been living in a cave all these years, why would he look like he's happily drinking cava and eating tapas and chorizo every day?
And my question is, how did Mr. Llamazares find out?
Isn't this supposed to be "top secret"?
I think the terrorists must be "lol"ing right now. Look at these idiots running like headless chickens without their shoes at their airports! Look at the FBI playing around with Google images! Ha, ha, ha, ha! HA HA HA HA!
If they haven't brought the US to their knees, they have certainly succeeded on making us look like the stupidest nation on Earth.

The Middle Beast

I have been scouring the press for interesting things to talk about. I think I have information fatigue. The Middle East is always a convenient source for agita and a never ending topic of impending doom.
Here are two tidbits I found today in the paper.
There's the saga of David Rhodes, a New York Times journalist who was abducted by the Taliban and held for seven months until he escaped. I have not yet read the articles but did follow the interactive videos and the comments and questions of the readers. A detail caught my eye, which is something we should not forget as we grapple with our misguided presence in that hellhole. Here's Rhodes, recommending bibliography on the topic:

 For an understanding of the United States’ role in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s, I would recommend Steve Coll’s book: “Ghost Wars.” Coll describes how the United States helped spread fundamentalist Islam in the region in the 1980s and then largely abandoned Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s.

So there we have it. We fucked up and here are the results of our idiotic misadventures. Whatever we are doing about it now; that is, attacking militants with drones that kill both militants and civilians, is not really helping, except exacerbate hatred for America in the region. What to do about Afghanistan and Pakistan?
My opinion I will keep to myself, for will not make me very popular in politically correct circles. But it would not be a bad idea to consider withdrawing the unwelcome American presence from there and from Iraq.

Meanwhile, everybody continues to happily dump on Israel.  Here's a refreshing paragraph:

Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored...

This was written by Robert Bernstein, one of the founders of Human Rights Watch. Although I don't agree with his assertion that HRW should just concern itself with the abuses committed in closed societies (what about Guantanamo then?), I agree with that paragraph. Israel is not the enemy anymore, and Israel, instead of continuing being arrogant and defiant, should use this development to its advantage. European countries, who have forever been hostile to Israel, are changing their tune, now that they have also been victims of terrorist attacks by fundamentalist barbarians.
I could scarcely believe my ears when I heard British Col. Richard Kemp defend Israel at the UN for its handling of the Gaza offensive. A British officer defending Israel! How things have changed... Nor is Israel the sole culprit for the terrifying state of affairs between the Western world and fundamentalist Islam, as many like to think.
This doesn't mean that Israel is off the hook. Quite the contrary, this is an excellent opportunity to be on the side of reason and civilization -- that is of democracy and Westerndom. This is the time to fight back fundamentalism with pragmatic policies that will end the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians (unfortunately, and to judge from Fatah and Hamas, their own oppression of themselves will most probably continue unabated).
Imagine that tomorrow Israel and the Palestinians come to an agreement and a Palestinian state is born and peace is achieved. What are the Arab countries going to do when they no longer have a scapegoat with which to delude and distract their oppressed populations? Let's see if indeed then the attacks against Israel by Arab and Muslim countries and others will end. I doubt it.